The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health is pleased to announce that its executive director, Dr. Octavio N. Martinez, Jr., has been appointed to the Advisory Committee to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (ACD).
The ACD advises the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Assistant Secretary for Health on policy and broad strategies to enable CDC to fulfill its mission of protecting the nation’s health and addressing health disparities.
The ACD, which was terminated in 2019, is being re-established; and as advertised in the Federal Register, the committee charter was renewed in 2021. As an official federal advisory committee, the ACD provides guidance to help CDC work more effectively with its various private and public sector constituents to make health protection a reality. Meetings are open to the public.
“It is an honor to serve on this committee,” said Dr. Martinez. “Whether it’s health disparities, health equity, or improving the conditions that underpin mental health, it takes a national effort, and that effort must be cross-sector and multi-disciplinary.”
Committee members include people with expertise in areas pertinent to the CDC mission, such as public health, health equity, medical education, industry, healthcare delivery, health policy, preventive medicine, allied fields, and communication.
Along with his position at the Hogg Foundation, Martinez serves as a senior associate vice president for the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, clinical professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, and professor of psychiatry at Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. In 2021, he was appointed to the Biden-Harris COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force.
Martinez currently serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s, Health and Medicine Division’s Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity and the board of Trust for America’s Health. He is a recipient of the 2015 Psychiatric Excellence Award from the Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness Texas’s 2015 Mental Health Professional of the Year Award, among other honors. He is the fifth executive director and first psychiatrist to lead the Hogg Foundation since its creation in 1940.
Dr. Martinez joins 14 other ACD members including the chair, David Warren Fleming, M.D., Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health.
Contact: Ike Evans, Communications Manager; imani.evans@austin.utexas.edu; (512) 293-4265